Will It Be or Not?

In life, certainty is a luxury we cannot afford. Yes, wealth grants limited control, but can you guarantee your life at the next minute?

After being a victim of April Fool’s Day, I grudgingly logged into the class to partake in the lessons. The topic of the day is discrete probability. I did my best to follow the presentation. Then came the sledgehammer- binomial distribution. My heart raced to the end of the earth. I had a flashback of my secondary school – permutation, combination, binomial distribution, etc. The sleepless nights I had to understand and pass those subjects was not an experience I wanted to re-live. Joy flooded my soul when the professor assured us we were not calculating manually but using the Excel function.

Well, how can this help in your business and career? The binomial distribution is suited for events where two mutually exclusive outcomes exist. These outcomes are success or failure. For example, at work, staff can either be promoted or not. In business, you either make a sale or not. In computing this, in the event of n number of trials, the probability of each event is assumed to be the same.

The probability theorem empowers us to focus more on the likelihood or unlikelihood of an event happening and not just on the possibility. As an Uber driver, with probability, you can estimate the peak periods where you most likely get more customers at the best price and under the best traffic conditions. As a retail business, you can know when to expect your store to be saturated and how best to set up security measures to prevent theft and mismanagement. Even in farming, we can estimate the probability of an animal reaching adulthood and being sold or killed for profit. This analysis enables profit estimation and can be used to secure potential investors.

As we approach the rainy season, let us take Nigeria as another example – some areas are prone to floods. These areas can either be flooded or not. We can build a robust probability model based on historical data. Using this model, we can tell which areas would likely be hit based on the weather forecast and historical flooding data. It would save lives and properties rather than merely reacting when the floods start. We are in a digital age and should harness modern tools to combat matters in the environment.

The probability theorem should not be a course to study in the classroom alone but a practical part of our everyday life. I started building a route database to reflect when I close from work – at 17:15 and when I get home. The difference in departure and arrival times reflects the traffic condition. I intend to build this data for six months. With that, I can accurately measure the probability of getting home on time on various days of the week. If you are interested in my template or the outcome, inform me in the comment section.

Light, Love, and Life

#DA #MMBA4